


The Bee Eats the Butterfly

by russianhousedj



Series: summerverse [3]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Internal Conflict, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 07:36:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18960772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russianhousedj/pseuds/russianhousedj
Summary: Ryan takes. He takes and takes, and he puts up with so much bullshit because heallowshimself to. He thinks he knows that, thinks he's finally beginning to listen to that nudging thought he seems to always have that's less of a nudging thought and more of a revelation scratching at the insides of his brain to try to get out. He probably won't take it forever. He thinks about how one of these days, he’s going to snap and say that he’s done. But it’s been over three years now, and that still, somehow, just hasn't happened yet.





	The Bee Eats the Butterfly

**Author's Note:**

> hi lil biscuits, it's been a BIT, does anyone still care about this verse??? I'M SORRY. i've quit my job, finished the school semester, got a new job, started therapy, and worked on saving up to go to australia all while trying to not lose my mind as a waitress. so, delays happen. MY B :^)
> 
> this is a pretty short one, but i like it that way. it says just enough to get across what it needs to. probably one of the more angsty/sadder pieces i've delved into lately, just because of the themes surrounding it. i used to write short, sad, feelings-riddled one shots like this almost exclusively for years... guess i'm going back to my roots?? or something.
> 
> hope u like, and ofc, i'm not done with this verse yet. yeah right.

From where he lies back on the edge of Chris’s bed, he can feel his pulse thumping in the small of his back. He’s just working on breathing right again, and in the comedown, with his brain feeling like it’s getting rewired, these thoughts that maybe he’d normally catch slip by him. Ryan wonders if it’s always going to feel like this, if it’s  _ supposed _ to feel like this. And he doesn’t just mean the sex.

Chris returns from where he’d left him carelessly, passing him one of the two cans of root beer he’s gathered from the empty kitchen. Ryan hardly wants to find the energy to sit back up, but he manages to before Chris gets annoyed with him and ends up taking the drink. He’s surprised it’s not actual beer this time, but figures it makes sense considering that Julian hasn’t been around to buy them booze lately since going away to Chicago for a week. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but Ryan prefers it this way, prefers just being a kid for a second and not drinking like a twice-divorced man in his mid forties every weekend.

“Have fun?” Chris asks, smirking around the lip of his can, and Ryan stares at him, imagining he’ll cut his lip on the aluminum with that smile. They don’t usually talk about it afterward, or sometimes at all, until Chris’s hand is shuffling towards Ryan’s pants again. So he doesn’t always know how to take it, isn’t sure what hidden meaning there may be when Chris is so forward like this. Even worse, he isn’t always sure what he’s meant to say, either. Ryan has gotten pretty good at this point at knowing what Chris likes to hear, when he gives these unspoken signals, when he speaks in a way that all but commands this certain type of visceral response out of his boyfriend.

When it’s out the ordinary like this though, a misstep out of their routine, Ryan is afraid of saying the wrong things. The last thing he needs is more ground for Chris to berate him on, something stupid he’s said or done to justify the way Chris rolls his eyes or narrows them in that way that makes Ryan’s heart pound.

Ryan was never intimate with anyone before Chris, and it all moved relatively fast once freshman year was over. That summer as fifteen-year-olds they became closer than Ryan had ever expected to grow with anyone, and he became latched onto the feeling. It felt good to feel like he was venturing into new ground, going somewhere he might not have been meant to go. They fucked for the first time in the backseat of one of the cars of Chris’s older friends, after drinking in the gas station parking lot after hours and being goaded on by the group. Ryan thinks of it sometimes, recounts the stickiness of the summer air they’d locked into the car with their breaths. There were those voices muffled beyond the fogging window, distant enough from the curb that Ryan couldn’t make out what they were saying, though he didn’t really want to. And he still remembers Chris staring at him in the red-tinted light of the gas station’s glowing sign, huddled in a car that smelled of cigarette ashes and old weed with both of their pants shoved to their thighs. In the moment, the mantra he repeated to himself was that the feeling stagnant in his stomach was love. He loves him.

Three years later now, that feeling is all dull and muddled together with everything else. He thinks he still feels it sometimes, when he looks up at Chris from his spot on the sheets still unwashed from the last time. It’s so practiced now that he doesn’t have to remind himself that it’s love. He just doesn’t focus on it at all.

“Yeah,” Ryan answers, and huffs out a bit of a laugh, feeling the warmth in his cheeks spread to the tips of his ears and down the back of his neck. He sips at the soda and thinks about the tickling burn in his nose the fizz leaves behind, an attempt to let the sensation take him away from the obvious eyes he can feel directed towards his neck. He’s tucked his legs in to criss-cross in front of him, this sort of reserved stance where he’s curled within himself. Part of him hopes keeping this way, with his back hunched, eyes down, and root beer close to his chest, will give Chris the idea that he isn’t really in for another round. It’s the only defense he has, to turn Chris off of it before it begins rather than ever saying no once he gets in the mood.

“I wonder how you could ever put up with anyone but me, since you’re so used to the way I fuck you.” Chris muses, setting his drink off to the side of the bed on the end table. He shuffles over to Ryan easily then, sliding a familiar arm around his still bare waist and tugging him a little closer. And though sometimes Ryan wishes he could keep to himself, he admits that he likes the feeling of intimacy. These touches are much closer to gentle than anything Chris will do to him when the lights are off. It’s affection, and care, and everything that Ryan knows that he sticks around for. He loves him.

The blush remains, frustratingly stubborn under his skin. Ryan guesses it’s no wonder Chris always gets what he wants with how vulnerable and pliant he always lets himself be. If a hint of a complaint ever springs to mind, it inevitably gets tucked back away again. It’s this sharp, jutting thought, like a bent nail poking out of place to remind him when he forgets it’s there; anything he could complain about likely wraps around to be his fault again, anyway.

He hates Chris’s words right now. He hates that he speaks in this way that suggests he might leave him someday. Ryan can hardly remember a time when he wasn’t so involved with someone else, when he wasn’t a brain that was strung out on Chris and a heart that was enamored by him. The thought of getting left behind terrifies him.

Despite the discomfort at Chris’s implications, Ryan won’t mention it for fear of Chris taking it as some sort of invitation for a fight, which never goes well. When they’re sober, Chris turns on him, blames him, upsets him. When they’re high, Ryan talks back stupidly enough until they make out and forget why they were arguing. And when they’re drunk, Ryan lets himself get angry, and if Chris pokes at him, he shoves him back. The amount of times he’s bruised his knuckles on his own boyfriend scares him sometimes.

So he’s glad for the root beer for now.

“I mean… I don’t think I want anyone else but you, anyway.” Ryan says, reassuring Chris, or reassuring himself. Chris’s hand tightens a little at his waist then, and he’s pulled just those few inches closer. He likes being close. He loves him.

Chris smiles, wider than one of his smirks, and Ryan can’t help the way he shifts his head to get a better look, to lock eyes with him and share a smile back. Chris moves the barely touched can of soda out of Ryan’s loose grasp and replaces it with his own hand. Ryan’s hand is sweaty, but he can feel the sweat from minutes ago cooling on his back. It’s easing him back down.

“Yeah,” Chris starts, and squeezes at his hand gently, their fingers haphazardly falling together.

“I know you’ll never break up with me.”

Ryan feels for a moment like it’s a little harder to breathe, and he blames it on the way his heart must be swelling at the words. He takes a deep, staggered breath in and hopes that Chris doesn’t take it the wrong way. Hopes he doesn’t take him  _ breathing _ the wrong way.

He guesses he’s supposed to smile. He doesn’t feel happy with the statement, but it’s not like he feels particularly sad at it, either. Ryan is pretty sure he knew that all along, but it’s different to know that this whole time, Chris has known too. Has he been keeping that knowledge to himself? Harboring it to eventually drop on Ryan out of nowhere when he’s most vulnerable like this, hoping to devastate him with the power of it?

Of course not. Ryan guesses he’s supposed to smile, and he lets his eyes move up to Chris’s own again so that he can let his lips turn up a little.

Why else would he mention it if it hadn’t been something of the moment? Something observational he’s just come across, something innocent to say and something that didn’t have any double meaning. Ryan always looks for the double meanings, though he swears he didn’t used to. He doesn’t like that about himself, doesn’t like that sometimes it’s just Chris touching him in a certain way that makes he  _ himself _ feel less trustworthy. What he wants is to be the best boyfriend he can be. To be the kind of constant to Chris that Chris is for him.

He feels a little sick now, and he doubts it's because of the soft drink.

While he stares down at their fingers, feeling Chris’s free hand tingling lightly along the skin of his side, he thinks about it. He doesn’t want to fight. But it’s just the way he _said it._

“You think I can’t find someone else?”

Chris’s blunt nails dig a little into Ryan’s side, and Ryan feels like he should be fighting the small shiver that runs up through him, yet he lets it go anyway. He can feel Chris’s breath hot near where his neck meets his shoulder, but when he looks over Chris is still smirking in that way that he does.

“I mean you’re hot baby, you’re something.” He says, almost as if he’s teasing.

“But there’s no one out there that’s like… as right for you as me, you know?” Chris finishes with this short sigh, something sort of dreamy. Definitive. Ending the conversation.

And Ryan mulls over his words for himself, feels the stark weight behind them despite how softly Chris is still holding onto his skin. He’s figured that exact sentiment plenty of times for himself at this point. He’s come to terms with it, settled on it being true. 

But on the other hand, it’s not fair to ask him not to let his mind wander sometimes, those few nights when he’s without Chris and wondering why he feels like his sense of awareness, his sense of _belonging_ , is missing somewhere. He thinks, and he questions and he _wonders_.

He’s been led by his gut this far. He’s been coerced by his own drunken thoughts, given opportunities by his mind so high up on weed that he blacks out from laughing. Ryan’s let his cock tell him what feels good, shoved into darkened classrooms after school hours. He’s let his wrenching stomach show him what really makes him sick, waiting strung out for hours for Chris to answer his texts after making a mistake. Ryan has been trusting of his own intuition up until now, so why should he ever doubt that he’s gone the right way?

That feeling when he looks at Chris now, the way his heart wrenches while he has this inner turmoil, running over all of this- he loves him. He couldn’t find anywhere that he’d be happier, not with his dad skipping town and his mom keeping late night shifts as if just to avoid her son. The friends they keep around hardly get them. No one else that Ryan’s with ever seems to really  _ get _ him, and it’s comforting that he finds he has that with Chris. This dance they do, no matter how many times they step on each others’ toes, it’s familiar. Ryan can feel it in the way that his breath stutters out of his chest.

He loves... feeling as though he’s loved by him.

“You’d know best, huh,” Ryan jokes, rolling his eyes, and leaning his weight a little into Chris’s hold. Chris’s expression doesn’t falter, just stays faint and charming. A little mischievous. As if that’s exactly what he expected Ryan to say.

“I know you better than anyone.” Chris tells him, and then finds a way to creep along the sheets they’re on, somehow in a way that Ryan can’t detect until his hand is already under Ryan’s briefs again. Or maybe Ryan knew it was coming all along, and just let it happen because this is what they do.

Ryan nods with a shallow, barely-there movement of his tired head. He hates that he goes along with it, that he agrees, because Chris is right, and Chris knows best, and Chris has stuck around for this long so why would he ever  _ not _ mean what he says. Why should he ever question him, why should he question _himself_ , why should he ever ponder for so long over how they feel about each other, for hours and so fucking deeply, thinking about it until it _hurts_.

How could any of this possibly be wrong?

Ryan thinks, somehow through his half-lidded eyes and through the sensations they’re revisiting for the countless time together, and wonders if he’ll ever be able to feel as though he’s thinking for himself again. When he’s drunk he believes he’s thinking freely, but he’s tired of all the blood.

With resignation, Ryan angles his body further towards Chris. He lets his boyfriend kiss him, and he realizes as he sinks into the intimate pattern that he thinks he’s done with holding out hope that he’ll ever be able to stand up to Chris without breaking either Chris, or himself, first.

**Author's Note:**

> if you feel like ryan does, or if someone's treating you like chris treats him, or if something doesn't feel RIGHT, talk it over with someone. talk it over with _yourself_. you're more than just something that gets pushed around and treated like a commodity or convenience in someone else's life. luv u.
> 
> def gonna shoot for posting something new sooner this time, but i say that every time, don't i?
> 
> if you leave a comment, i'll probably think about it and swoon over it for the next like....... week and a half. that's what i do. i love when you guys share <3


End file.
